We should have got on very well if we had kept to that, but on my quoting
a line of Horace to praise one of his pieces, he said that Horace was a
great master who had given precepts which would never be out of date.
Thereupon I answered that he himself had violated one of them, but that
he had violated it grandly.

"Which is that?"

"You do not write, 'Contentus paucis lectoribus'."

"If Horace had had to combat the hydra-headed monster of superstition, he
would have written as I have written--for all the world."

"It seems to me that you might spare yourself the trouble of combating
what you will never destroy."

"That which I cannot finish others will, and I shall always have the
glory of being the first in the field."

"Very good; but supposing you succeed in destroying superstition, what
are you going to put in its place?"

"I like that. If I deliver the race of man from a wild beast which is
devouring it, am I to be asked what I intend to put in its place?"

"It does not devour it; on the contrary, it is necessary to its
existence."

"Necessary to its existence! That is a horrible blasphemy, the falsity of
which will be seen in the future. I love the human race; I would fain see